There's a Ghost!

[After running for a long time, your strength has increased]

[Strength Proficiency +2]

[Primary Bear Strength: 122/1000]

When he saw the notification,

or perhaps it was just a psychological suggestion,

Chen Guan also felt his strength had improved a little.

Chen Guan didn't care. Right now, getting away was what mattered most.

But being able to train his inherited talent while running away was a good thing, too.

So, run!

Chen Guan took off at a sprint and kept fleeing.

But as he ran,

Chen Guan also thought about the "Low-Grade Fire Spirit Root" talent.

It was an inheritance from the old man in his previous life.

What did he need to do to trigger it?

Or could he cultivate fire-attribute techniques?

Whoosh—

An arrow flew past Chen Guan's ear.

The sudden danger interrupted his thoughts.

For now, focusing on getting away was more important.

Chirp, chirp~

Three hours later,

moonlight streamed through gaps in the treetops, spilling between gloomy clouds and stirring up a chorus of insects.

The air was damp.

It looked like rain was on the way.

Deep in the forest,

Chen Guan hid behind a large boulder, panting.

Under the stuffy, oppressive weather,

he plopped his big rump onto the ground, stretched out all four limbs, and had no desire to move at all.

[Strength +3]

At the moment, the proficiency notifications were the only thing giving Chen Guan any consolation.

As long as he kept running, he would grow stronger.

"Damn it..."

Behind a tree a hundred meters away,

the constable and his men were having no easier a time.

Mosquitoes swarmed all around them in the forest, and wild beasts might appear at any moment.

They also had to stop occasionally along the way to leave markers.

All the back-and-forth had left them utterly exhausted, body and mind.

But the sunk-cost fallacy had them in its grip. They'd been chasing their target for so long, and they'd even sent word to the townsfolk.

If they turned back now, all their previous efforts would be wasted.

They'd lose face, too.

They were caught between a rock and a hard place.

"Chief... why don't we... head back for now?"

One of the constables still had enough sense to know he didn't want to spend any longer in this dangerous forest. If they failed to catch the Black Bear, they might lose their own lives instead.

As he spoke, he shook the quiver of arrows at his waist.

Only two were left.

Once they'd shot them all, they'd have no trump cards left, and no way to keep the Black Bear in check.

Then the Black Bear would show its fangs.

"I want to give it another try... keep pursuing him..."

Despite everyone's urging, the constable wasn't willing to give up.

The other constables could see he wouldn't be talked around. What else could they say?

Rumble—

Just then,

a long peal of thunder suddenly rolled across the sky, and a long-awaited downpour fell in the sweltering heat.

Their vision blurred at once.

"I thought it might not rain..." one constable said with a frown. "And now it really is?"

"That's not good." A middle-aged constable spoke worriedly, looking pointedly at the chief. "Chief, are we still going after him?"

"Keep going...?"

Perhaps the rain had cooled the constable's stubborn resolve.

"Forget it! Let's find somewhere to take shelter. Stay away from the trees..."

The Black Bear was already difficult to handle, and now the conditions had turned even worse.

If they kept pursuing him, they'd truly be gambling with their lives.

The constable might have the doubts and stubbornness of an ordinary person, but in the end, he still valued his life.

"Let's go for now..."

"We'll wait for the skies to clear..."

The other constables breathed a sigh of relief when the chief gave the order, then followed him to look for shelter nearby.

Meanwhile,

though Chen Guan was now a Black Bear, a blind bear, his eyesight wasn't very good, but his hearing and sense of smell were sharp.

The Black Bear he'd possessed was especially extraordinary, far beyond any real-world bear.

A real bear could hear only about two hundred meters, but he could hear more than three hundred meters away.

Rustle, rustle—

Amid the clamor of the rain,

Chen Guan listened carefully and faintly heard the receding footsteps of humans snapping branches beneath their feet.

"One... two... four... They're all gone..."

After confirming that all six seemed to have left because of the rain, Chen Guan didn't stay where he was. Instead, he headed off in the opposite direction.

Of course, Chen Guan was exhausted now and wanted nothing more than to sleep right there.

But if he did, some other beast might attack him while he slept.

Besides, Chen Guan didn't want to wake up after a long sleep to find the sky bright and the smiling constable and all his reinforcements waiting around him.

After walking and running in bursts for another hour,

the rain still hadn't let up.

Chen Guan felt so heavy. His fur was soaked through, adding to his already considerable weight.

But the training was paying off, too.

He gained another two points.

His total reached [Primary Bear Strength: 127/1000].

In just five hours, he'd gained seven points!

"In a bit, I need to find a safe place out of the rain. If I can make sure I don't exhaust myself, maybe I can grind out ten points today and make it a nice round number..."

The fully quantified stats showed that effort brought rewards.

Chen Guan's urge to grind away grew stronger.

Rumble—

Half an hour later,

the thunderstorm continued, and the rain looked like it was only getting heavier.

Chen Guan no longer knew where he was, but he spotted a Dilapidated Temple in a clearing ahead.

It was a good place to get out of the rain and hide for a while.

There was no light, so it seemed deserted.

Chen Guan cautiously approached, his round ears twitching on either side as he listened to the sounds inside, like ears that could catch the wind.

After a moment,

he cautiously reached the temple entrance.

Keeping close to the doorframe, Chen Guan stepped inside.

The next second,

though the temple was empty, Chen Guan felt an inexplicable chill.

"Ghost stories always have people encountering ghosts in ruined temples. And now this really is a world of Gods and Devils..."

Chen Guan felt a little panicked and glanced at the dilapidated statue of a god in the temple.

"Gods, protect me..."

Like a human, Chen Guan clasped his paws together in a clumsy imitation of the prayers he'd seen on TV, and prayed for good fortune.

After that,

taking advantage of the lightning outside, Chen Guan looked toward the back of the temple.

There was a door leading to the back courtyard.

There was nothing but the sound of rain back there. No voices.

Whoosh, whoosh—

He moved toward the courtyard.

When he reached the door,

Chen Guan had planned to find somewhere to rest, like a side room in the back. But just as he stepped over the threshold with his front paw,

the threshold seemed to come alive and suddenly grew longer.

Chen Guan hadn't expected this. Before he could react, he tripped in the darkness and went tumbling into a pool of thick, sticky water.

Beside it stood a locust tree split by lightning.

The sticky liquid was a mixture of the tree's ashes and muddy water.

It also had a peculiar, sickly-sweet smell.

Hulu Lu—

Chen Guan got up from the pool and instinctively shook his body, flinging some of the sticky feeling off his fur.

Then he turned around.

Chen Guan wanted to see what had happened to the threshold.

But as he looked, and shook himself—

he really did start trembling.

Because the threshold had actually floated into the air, as if by some unearthly force!

And behind it,

there was a dried corpse that looked like a little girl of seven or eight.

In a scene like this, the dried corpse had to be haunted!

"God in the temple... I even prayed to you, but damn it, you don't seem able to keep your own place in order..."

Chen Guan was afraid.

But even as fear gripped him,

when faced with a life-or-death crisis involving a ghost, most people might freeze, panic, turn and run, or fight to the death.

Chen Guan was the last kind.

Terror made his scalp prickle, and adrenaline surged through him.

"Worst comes to worst, I'll just reincarnate!"

Chen Guan rose onto his hind legs, looking both excited and frightened. Facing the floating threshold, he summoned all his strength, took two running steps, and slapped it with all his might!

Crash—

The next second,

the rotten wooden threshold, already battered by the elements, shattered beneath the blow.

Chen Guan's momentum carried him forward, and he staggered several more steps before crashing into the wall by the back door.

Thud!

His several-hundred-pound body had nearly knocked the stone wall down, and cracks now showed in it.

But because he'd gotten so close to the door, he could see the area behind the statue clearly.

Just then, lightning flashed outside the temple.

Rain poured down.

Behind the little girl's corpse stood the faint, ghostly figure of another little girl.

In terms of height alone, the two looked rather alike.

Now she was watching Chen Guan with curiosity.

"So this is a ghost?"

It was Chen Guan's first time seeing one, and he froze completely.

When the little girl saw that Chen Guan seemed able to see her, she timidly floated a little farther back.

After all, this was her first time seeing a bear so much like a person—a bear that even prayed to a statue.